Lactantius and Creation of the Roman Canon for Imperial Liturgy PDF

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QL 100 (2020) 84-137 doi: 10.2143/QL.100.1.000000 © 2020, all rights reserved LACTANTIUS AND CREATION OF THE ROMAN CANON FOR IMPERIAL LITURGY The ancient origin, structure, and character of the Textus Receptus of the Canon Missae (= CM) are shrouded in mystery and continue to provoke speculation and...

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QL 100 (2020) 84-137

doi: 10.2143/QL.100.1.000000 © 2020, all rights reserved

LACTANTIUS AND CREATION OF THE ROMAN CANON FOR IMPERIAL LITURGY

The ancient origin, structure, and character of the Textus Receptus of the Canon Missae (= CM) are shrouded in mystery and continue to provoke speculation and debate.1 In addition to studies comparing the Egyptian anaphora of St. Mark (= MK) to the CM, since these two anaphoras share curious affinities, there has also been scholarly comparison of the CM to the Strasbourg Papyrus.2 I have benefitted from these previous investigations, but intend to concentrate my present disquisition on North African Christianity and features of North African liturgy in light of recent studies, such as those of M. Smyth.3 The present investigation supplements these studies by noting the influence of pagan literature on the works of Latin Christians of antiquity, who were unquestionably influenced by Marcus Valerius Varro’s (116 BC-27 BC) systematization of Roman religion in his Rerum divinarum libri XVI (scripsit 45 BC). The relatively meager fragments that are extant from Varro’s Rerum divinarum cannot confirm Varro’s proximate and direct influence of Roman religious vocabulary and institutions on North African Christians. Nevertheless, by the numerous references by North African Christians to Varro, he undeniably influenced their literary output, just as Varro is equally renowned for his influence on fellow pagans such as Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC), Marcus Valerius Maximus (scripsit AD 31), and Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BC-AD 65). The periods encompassing the aforementioned writers fall within a 1. For reference to the Roman anaphora, see A. Gerhards – H. Brakmann (eds.), Canon Missae, in Prex Eucharistica: Textus e variis liturgiis antiquioribus selecti, 1 (Spicilegium Friburgense. Texte zur Geschichte des kirchlichen Lebens, 12 (Fribourg/CH: Academic Press Fribourg, 1998) 421-437. 2. E.g., Walter Ray, “Rome and Alexandria: Two Cities, On Anaphoral Tradition,” in Issues in Eucharistic Praying in East and West: Essays in Liturgical and Theological Analysis, ed. M. Johnson (Collegeville, MN, Liturgical Press, 2010) 99-128. 3. Mathieu Smyth, La liturgie oubliée: La prière eucharistique en Gaule antique et dans l’Occident non romain, Patrimoines – Christianisme (Paris: Cerf, 2003) 487-518; “La prière eucharistique hispano’gallicane et l’antique liturgie de l’Afrique romaine,” Miscellania Liturgica Catalana 21 (2013) 11-39; “L’antique prière eucharistique romaine et les autres témoins de cette tradition,” Revue des Sciences Religieuses 88 (2014) 27-48.

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periodization known as “The Romanization of Africa.” Unsuprisingly, Africans were greatly influenced by writers like Varro, Cicero, and Seneca. North African Christians were not only directly influenced by the works of the renowned Cicero and Seneca, but Varro’s theology served as a standard point of reference in the theological writings of Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullian (c. 170-c. 220), Arnobius Afer (floruit c. 290-c. 327), Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius (c. 250-c. 326), and Aurelius Augustine (354-430).4 From the late-second century, burgeoning literary production of North African Christians coincided with what has been deemed the “The Africanization of Rome,” starting with the disproportionate membership of North Africans in the Roman Senate, where they occupied nearly onethird of its seats as early as 180.5 This Africanization culminated in 193 at the accession of the first African emperor, Lucius Septimius Severus, whose African dynasty included the succession of his sons Geta and Caracalla until 217.6 Burgeoning North African influence on Roman politics was coupled with the accession of a North African (natione Afer) to the bishophric of Rome in the person of Pope Victor I (sed. 189-199).7 Upon arrival at Rome Victor took up the question of calendrical discipline against Quartodecimans, which clearly pertained to a question of liturgical praxis.8 Meanwhile, Tertullian ranked second only after Augustine for his regular references to Varro’s Rerum divinarum.9 After Varro, Roman thinkers started treating civil law as something formally distinct from religious custom and law, with the result that religion and civil law were no longer conflatable institutions.10 Cicero serves as a point of departure for describing a cultural shift wherein Roman pontifices presumably no longer needed to be experts on civil law to undertake their duties, for it was outside of their competence. This distinction between religion and other Roman institutions led to a partial disambiguation of Roman religion from non-priestly Roman 4. For the extant fragments of Varro (almost exclusively reproduced by Tertullian and Augustine), see M. Terenti Varronis antiquitatum rerum divinarum libri I, XIV, XV, XVI, praemissae sunt quaestiones varronianae, ed. R. Agahd (Leipzig: Teubner, 1898). 5. David Wilhite, Tertullian the African, Millennium Studies (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007), 30. strike comma 6. Ibid., 30-31. 7. Theodor Mommsen (ed.), Liber Pontificalis: Pars prior, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica inde ab anno Christi quingentesimo usque ad annum millesimum et quingentesimum, Gestorum Pontificum Romanorum, 1 (Berlin: Apud Weidmannos, 1898) 18. 8. Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica, in Eusèbe de Césarée: Histoire ecclésiastique, 2, ed. G. Bardy, Sources Chrétiennes, 41 (Paris: Cerf, 1955) 66-70. 9. See, e.g., Jan Waszink, “Varro, Livy and Tertullian on the History of Roman Dramatic Art,” Vigiliae Christianae 2 (1948) 224-242. 10. John A. North, “The Limits of the ‘Religious’ in the Late Roman Republic,” History of Religions 53 (2014) 225-245, esp. 228-242.

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offices in the state. After this process began, Tertullian, Arnobius, Lactantius, and Augustine became familiar with Varro. For his part, even if attempting to prop up dignity and reverence for traditional Roman religion, Varro was partially under the spell of recent Greek Stoicism (of the same sort as Cicero, i.e., of Posidonios) and, perhaps even more heavily, of the Platonism under the recent Fifth Academy initiated by Aristarchos of Ascalon.11 While little survives from Varro’s massive corpus, Stoicizing Romans who rationalized their religion (e.g., Cicero) and Stoicizing Christians, who did likewise, were under the influence of Stoicizing Roman eclecticism in philosophy and law, not to mention the gravitational pull of Varro’s work on theology. During the course of the third century, it was fairly routine for Africans to move to Rome, and even more so for Italians to move to Africa, for government postings in the cursus honorum for advancing their careers.12 However, after the accession of Constantine, extant sources lead one to conclude that North Africans began to dominate administrative and military roles in their homeland and gain more influence abroad. The fortunes of North Africans in the post-Constantinian empire seemed to coincide with an influx of North Africans into ecclesiastical positions in Italy as well, resulting in some Africans elected as bishops of Italian sees, even to the bishophric of Rome (310-314), i.e., Meltiades (natione Afer).13 North African cults to martyrs in southern Italy in the fourth century and the prominence of North African bishops in northern Italy (viz., Zeno of Verona, Fortunatianus of Aquileia, etc.) altogether suggest that liturgical customs of North Africans were transplanted onto fertile soil at Rome and elsewhere on the Italian peninsula.14 Along with the arrival of North Africans to their Italian postings, literate African ecclesiasiastics would have also brought with them a theology heavily in dialogue with Roman religion and institutions, just as Tertullian and Augustine. Turning to Italy, Pope Meltiades was heavily involved in North African politics during the whole of his pontificate due to the Donastist controversy, which dominated Latinophone ecclesiastical politics until well into the fifth century. Numerous North African bishops were called to Rome by Emperor Constantine I, with the result that both Catholic and Donatist celebrations of the Eucharist occured in Rome (313) until the Donatists abandoned the capital after an unfavorable outcome of their case before 11. Jörge Rupke, “Varro’s Antiquitates and History of Religion in the Late Roman Republic,” History of Religions 53 (2014) 246-248, esp. 248, 253, 256. 12. Jonathan Conant, Staying Roman: Conquest and Identity in Africa and the Mediterranean 439-700, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) 8-11. 13. Liber Pontificalis, 46. 14. Conant, Staying Roman, 11, 113.

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Meltiades. For this inquest-turned-synod, Constantine had appointed some of his own judges; namely, the bishops of Arles, Cologne, and Augustodunum. They were to come to Rome and along with Meltiades act as arbiters in the controversy.15 The appointment of bishops in cities of imperial residence formed a propitious connection between Gallic and Roman bishops familiar with the ceremony of imperial court, with the result that these bishops of Gaul would have adjusted with relative ease to numerous Roman customs of clergy celebrating for the imperial household at Rome. There, they would have participated in Roman and perhaps North African liturgies during their stay. Donatist rejection of the unfavorable outcome of their case in Rome led to yet another Constantinian synod of bishops to gather in Arles in 314 against the intransigents. Naturally, the bishop of Arles was already familiar with both court etiquette and Roman liturgy, elements of which might have been put on display for the representatives of the Roman Church; namely, for the two priests and two deacons representing Pope Sylvester who had just recently been elected bishop of Rome.16 North African influence abroad and membership in the imperial entourage also explain the presence of the most learned Latin Christian of the time, the North African Lactantius, who exercised an unrivalled influence among fellow Latins on Constantine and, as I will argue, on liturgical reform of post-Constantinian Rome. Turning to the episcopal liturgy of Rome and other cities of imperial residence in Italy and Gaul, a number of mysteries surrounding the CM and its predecessors demand an explanation by recourse to traditional sources and newly investigated texts from antiquity. To reconstruct a primitive CM, I utilize two texts that scholars readily admit are antecedents or variants of CM; namely, excerpts from Ambrose of Milan’s De Sacramentis (= Ambrose) and from an anonymous Arian Fragment (= Arian Frag.), where the (semi-)Arian author is himself citing an orthodox Eucharistic prayer (a variant of CM).17 Scholarly studies have already investigated similar excerpts from other liturgies, such as the Greek-Egyptian MK and various Gallican and Mozarabic sacramentaries.18 I supplement these familiar texts with what I consider to be the original but displaced sections of an earlier version of the CM, which I denominate hypothetically Canon 15. Harold Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (Baltimore, MD/London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002) 217-219. 16. Joseph O’Donnell, The Canons of the First Council of Arles 314 AD, Studies in Sacred Theology: Second Seris, 127 (Washington, DC: Catholic Unversity of America Press, 1961) 19. 17. See Ambrose, De Sacrementis. De Mystères, ed. B. Botte, Sources Chrétiennes, 24 (Paris: Cerf, 1949) 84-87; K. Mohlberg (ed.), Sacramentarium Veronense, Rerum Ecclesiasticarum Documenta. Series Maior: Fontes, 1 (Rome: Herder, 1978) 202. 18. See A. Gerhards – H. Brakmann (eds.), Anaphora Marci Evangelistae, in Prex Eucharistica, 101-115.

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Missae alpha (CMα). I will argue for CMα’s terminus post quem to be AD 313 and its terminus ante quem to be AD 325 (prior to Nicaea, given Lactantius’s infamous subordinationism).19 In the decades after the Council of Nicaea I (325), Roman Stoic philosophy undergirding the imperialesque and juridical vocabulary of the CMα (and subsequent CM) began to fall out of favor (at least rhetorically and apologetically) among Latin-Christian authors. One can suspect that Julian the Apostate (361-363) played a role in this anti-Stoic volte-face. He not only forbade Christians to teach philosophy in the schools, but apologetically counterpoised philosophy against Christianity. This brief pagan resurgence, effectively pitting philosophy against Christianity, resulted in anti-philosophical attitudes among some Latin churchmen, particularly Pope Damasus I (regn. 366-384). This prejudice was epitomized in Damasus’s principally anti-philosophic stance toward the controversial election Maximus the Cynic to the episcopacy.20 What is more, Damasus dismissed Ciceronian and Stoically inclined Christian authors of past generations. When, e.g., Jerome sent him works of Lactantius, Damasus refused to read them due to their classical style and Roman Stoic (viz., philosophical) outlook. Damasus, a reformer of Roman liturgy, wrote (384) about his dissatisfaction with Lactantius’s Roman Stoicism and passé (viz., pre-Nicene) theology: Fateor quippe tibi, eos, quos mihi iam pridem Lactantii dederas libros, ideo non libenter lego, quia et plurimae epistulae eius usque ad mille versuum spatia tenduntur et raro de nostro dogmate disputant; quo fit, ut et legenti fastidium generet longitudo et, si qua brevia sunt, scolasticis magis sint apta quam nobis de metris et regionum situ et philosophis disputantis.21 Indeed, I confess to you that the books of Lactantius, which you had given to me sometime ago, I do not hence read with pleasure since both his numerous letters are stretched over the space of thousands of verses and he rarely disputes about our [Anti-Arian] dogma, so that also it happens that, for the reader, such length produces boredom and, even if there are things of brevity, they are more apt for the scholastici [viz., Roman Stoics] (i.e., 19. Jerome, Epistula LXXXIV, ed. I. Hilberg, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 55/2 (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1912) 126. 20. Damasus, Epistula V, ed. J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina, 13 (Paris: Migne, 1848) cols. 365A-369A; Epistle 6, Patrologia Latina, 13 (Paris: Migne, 1848) cols. 369A-370A. For Julian the Apostate and Stoics’ usurpation of the celebrated Cynic Diogenes for their own programs, see Rowland Smith, Julian’s Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate (London: Routledge, 1995) 62-91. 21. See the citation of Damasus’s no longer extant letter in Jerome, Epistula XXXV Damasi ad Hieronymum, 1, ed. I. Hilberg, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasicorum Latinorum, 54 (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1910) 266.

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metrics, geography, and philosophers’ disputes) than for us [Christians]. (translation mine)

Damasus’s papacy coincided with a period of liturgical innovations throughout the empire. If Damasus began his liturgical reforms early in his papacy, this explains Hieronymian lack of familiarity with my reconstructed CMα, below. After all, Jerome was a neophyte in the 360s and only came to Rome in an official capacity starting in 382. Jerome became formally involved with Damasus while they were working on reforming the Latin Bible (c. 384). It was at this time of liturgical reform that Damasus was heavily involved in opposing a final attempt to restore official pagan worship in Rome, spearheaded by the pagan Roman Consul Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (c. 340-c. 402).22 Slightly before this time (c. 375), I note that classicizing Christians must have already clashed in Rome with post-Julian anti-philosophical Christian reactionaries. For example, Jerome famously dreamt himself accused before the tribunal of divine judgment for being a “Ciceronian” and, thusly, not Christian.23 The CMα entailed two peculiarities demanding revision for the needs of contemporary Christian orthodoxy. The first item demanding reform has not been previously emphasized; namely, CM below corrects CMα for being a mainly Stoic appeal to the divinity to enter into a legal contract with humanity. Secondly, CMα contains Christian themes that are reducible to primitive typology and angelomorphism. We might call CMα “a merciless imperial appeal” because it is literarily based upon Seneca’s De clementia, as I will show momentarily. I say “merciless,” because CMα avoided the term misericordia or miseratio, for mercy was a vice to Seneca as to other Stoics. Only around the fifth century did miseratio earn a single place in the CM’s Textus Receptus: “Nobis quoque peccatoribus famulis tuis de multitudine miserationum tuarum sperantibus partem aliquam et societatem donáre dignéris […].”24 Miseratio or pity was atypical of Stoics to pair with justice and equity.25 Even today’s CM contains a relatively modest amount of explicitly Christian and biblical material, in a style fairly typical of third- and fourth-century authors like Arnobius and Lactantius. While Lactantius theologically criticized Stoic devaluations of Christian misericordia, contra Seneca’s De clementia, Lactantius is equally well known to compose 22. John Liebeschuetz – Carole Hill, Ambrose of Milan: Political Letters and Speeches, Translated Texts for Historians, 43 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005) 61-62. 23. See Elizabeth Digeser, Lactantius, Constantine and the Roman “Res Publica” (Santa Barabara, CA: University of California Santa Barbara, 1996) 2, who records Jerome’s Epistula LXXXIV and a fourth-century council condemning Lactantius. 24. Canon Missae, 436. 25. Lactantius, Divinarum Institutionum, ed. S. Brandt, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 19 (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1880) 11, calls it a passion, not a virtue.

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works devoid of explicitly Christian references.26 I suppose the CMα to be another case of Lactantius imitating pagan models sometimes devoid of explicitly Christian themes in the pro-Stoic, post-Constantinian environment of Rome.27 The explicitly Christian sections of CMα are angelomorphic, i.e., they interpret patriarchs as angelic types of Christ, while Melchisedech is actually identified as a pre-Incarnate theophany of Jesus, and the Eucharist is the fulfillment of a type of the paschal lamb. To reconstruct the CMα, I first turn to Greek and Latin juristic sources, for these serve as lexical and stylistic models for parts of CMα and even today’s CM. Secondly, I single out Seneca’s De clementia, the clear root for some peculiar vocabulary and stylistic niceties within CMα. Next, I refer to angelomorphic studies. These demonstrate the necessity of understanding pre-Nicene typology and angelophany for interpreting much of Christian literature from the fourth century. Granted the aforementioned, I now turn to Anton Baumstark’s eponymous liturgical law: “Les états anciens se maintiennent avec plus de ténacité dans les temps les plus sacrés de l’année liturgique.”28 Accordingly, I went to the oldest feasts of the Roman calendar within the so-called Old Gelasian Sacramentary (GeV).29 Therein, I mined angelomorphic themes preserved in the liturgical texts of feasts, such as Theophany, Christmas, and Easter. Similar to the fourthcentury Arian Fragment, just below, I supposed that Roman praefationes in GeV might preserve fragments of a more primitive version of CM. I then theorized that the fourth/fifth-century Sanctus and fourth/fifth-century Memento displaced original sections of CMα. I repatriate these two sections back into my proposed chiastic structure for CMα at C1 and E1 below. Like CMα, Seneca also had modelled use of the chiasmus in his De clementia.30 Whereas the Sanctus ostensibly displaced C1 in the Textus Receptus of CM, I hypothesize the angelomorphic identity of Jesus as Melchisedech to give way to newer composit...